by J. D. Oswald
He had no choice but to follow the corridor downwards, the smoke now so thick it smothered him in choking hot ash and fragments of burning straw. He stumbled at first, until he reached fresher air, grabbed the nearest torch from its sconce on the wall and used it to light his way. The corridor grew narrower, its ceiling scarcely high enough for him to pass without crouching. Benfro counted two dozen cells, the first ones with doors big enough to allow him entry. He pushed open a few, peered inside but saw no way out. When the doors became too small for him, he stopped looking, hurried on towards the end and that blackness.
There must have been something, for he could feel a cool breeze on his face, a hint of a scent that wasn’t quite as unpleasant as the choking black smoke but not nice all the same. It reminded him of nothing so much as the privy house around the back of the big hall in the village where he had grown up. Normally it was as clean as a fresh-running stream, but in the early morning after a feast it had that old dragon smell he had always associated with Ynys Môn, Sir Frynwy, Ystrad Fflur and the others. Thinking of them brought a lump to his throat, but with it a determination to survive, to remember their names and to avenge their deaths.
Beulah woke from dreams of pain and suffering, the vivid image of Caradoc’s great head tumbling down the steps still in her eyes as she stared up at the cracked ceiling of her royal bedroom. Her ankle throbbed where the palace doctors had set the broken bone and wrapped it tight. The break had been bad if their tutting and head-shaking was anything to go by. It made sleeping difficult and left her constantly drained.
‘You’re awake. Good.’ Melyn emerged from the shadows in the far corner as if he had been there all along. Beulah blinked away the memory of the dead dragon as he crossed the room. There was something about the inquisitor that was different from the old man she remembered. He had always been healthy, hearty even, but now he walked with the vigour of youth. Were it not for his shock of pure white hair she might have mistaken him for someone her own age.
‘I hope you’re feeling better.’ Melyn approached the bed, and as he passed into the light Beulah gasped in surprise. He held his hands clasped together across his front, and she could see the skin on his fingers was gold and shiny. His eyes shone as if there were a fire in his head, and he gave off an aura of power that she had only ever felt before in the presence of the Shepherd.
‘What has happened to you? You’ve changed.’ Beulah meant only to think the words, but they spilled out of her in a low whisper. Melyn approached more slowly now, drew up a chair and settled himself down by the bed. He didn’t answer at first, just sat there staring at her until Beulah began to feel self-conscious.
‘You are right, Your Majesty: I have changed. Something did indeed happen to me. Something both terrible and wondrous. It won’t be easy for you to understand, let alone accept. I couldn’t, not at first. I went a little mad, as the mindless at Emmass Fawr found to their … distress.’
Beulah found herself transfixed by Melyn’s eyes again. The pupils were far larger than she remembered, dark and speckled with tiny flecks of red that seemed to flash and spin. They reminded her of something, but she couldn’t have said what. Not human eyes, for certain.
‘The Shepherd does not exist,’ he said. ‘He is a sham.’
Beulah stared, aware that her mouth was hanging open and yet unable to close it.
‘Perhaps I should rephrase that. The Shepherd is not who you think he is. His power is real.’ Melyn lifted up his hands, fingers splayed, and Beulah saw tiny golden scales all over them where skin had been. ‘He can perform things we might consider miracles – heal the sick, give strength to the weak and life to the elderly – but he did not create us, did not put us on Gwlad to guard it for his return. And he certainly did not make us in his image. Well, not entirely.’
‘I don’t understand. You met the Shepherd? He did this to you?’
‘I held his heart in my hands. Only it wasn’t a heart. It was a jewel, a vast red jewel taken from the brain of a living dragon many thousands of years ago. This is not something the common people need to know. Indeed, the fewer who know the truth the better. Our whole way of life, the Twin Kingdoms, the religious orders, all are predicated on the existence of, reverence for, the Shepherd. He is the glue that binds our society together. To suggest he is nothing but a lie, that King Ballah might have been right all along, will only lead to chaos.’
Beulah could see the sense in that, at least. What she couldn’t understand was how Melyn could have succumbed to such a delusion.
‘So why tell me?’ she asked. ‘Would it not be easier to keep the secret if you were the only one in the know?’
Melyn paused a moment before answering, shrugged slightly as if to suggest he had considered it. ‘It will come out, in time. Something like this cannot be hidden for ever. And besides, the lie is already unravelling before our eyes. Where do you think all these dragons are coming from?’
‘They are creatures of the Wolf, surely. They presage the return of the Shepherd, not his demise.’
Melyn shook his head. ‘The Wolf? I suppose after a fashion. Some certainly follow the evil he represents. It is not as simple as that though. Wolf and Shepherd are just two sides of the same coin, and it is a coin minted millennia ago by two dragon brothers.’
‘This cannot be. Dragons are … Your order’s charter is the eradication of their kind. The Aurddraig …’
‘The Order of the High Ffrydd will be needed now more than ever, my queen. You have seen the kind of damage these creatures can do. We will have to defend ourselves from the coming storm.’ Melyn bowed his head in her direction. ‘And we will need a strong leader to rally behind. Balwen fought off these beasts in ancient times; it is only fitting his heir lead the fight against them now.’
Beulah shifted in her bed, her leg uncomfortable in its tight bandage. ‘As long as they don’t come too soon. It will take weeks for my bones to heal.’
‘I think not weeks but days. Don’t you?’ Melyn looked back towards the corner where he had first appeared, and as Beulah’s gaze followed his, she saw the impossible. The shadows were not so deep there that she couldn’t make out the shapes of the furniture, the play of the light on the wall. And yet all of a sudden the dragon Frecknock stood there. Beulah shuddered both at the sight of her and the suddenness of her appearance. And yet Melyn was clearly at ease in the dragon’s presence. True, she was but a fraction of the size of Caradoc and the other beasts that had broken Candlehall; she was still large enough and strong enough to injure her should she wish. And she smelled like a dragon. Not the powerful musk of the feral beasts outside, but something undeniably alien all the same.
‘Frecknock has no desire to hurt you, Beulah. Quite the opposite. She has saved your life on more than one occasion, mine too.’ Melyn stood, moving his chair away from the bedside so that the dragon might approach, although for now she remained where she had appeared. ‘She is an excellent healer and has already administered to His Grace the Duke of Abervenn. How is Clun now?’
‘I have stopped the bleeding in his lungs and begun the process of mending his legs. He will walk again, although it will take him a while to recover fully.’
Beulah felt a skip in her heartbeat at the words. Was this some kind of cruel joke? Clun’s injuries had been so severe the palace doctors had declared it a miracle he wasn’t already dead.
‘What of his eyes?’ she asked.
‘Alas, that is beyond even my skill to repair, Your Majesty. They will clear with time. Hopefully. He is young.’ Frecknock’s voice was full of trepidation, as if the dragon feared for her life should she fail. Beulah could not quite understand how she was still alive anyway. Melyn had said she would live no longer than she was useful.
‘And yet you think I should let you try to heal me?’
‘Bones are not a problem, ma’am. If you will allow it, I will make sure they are all aligned correctly before encouraging them to knit back together.’
‘Encour
aging?’
‘It is not an easy thing to explain.’
‘Frecknock will not hurt you. I give you my word on that.’ Melyn beckoned the dragon over, but she remained in the corner. Beulah could almost taste her fear. She reached out with her mind, skirting over Frecknock’s thoughts for any sign of subterfuge, but the creature was as open as a newly welcomed novitiate. She was in awe of Melyn and bound to him by something Beulah couldn’t begin to understand. She would die rather than let the inquisitor come to harm, and Frecknock extended that strange fealty to Beulah too.
‘Come forward,’ Beulah said, and finally the dragon approached. She was much smaller than the others and had a way of shrinking in on herself that made her smaller still. Even so she towered over the bed, at least until she knelt. After a moment’s pause, she held both scaly hands out over the bedspread, palms down and fingers wide. Beulah felt a surge in the Grym quite different to the chill of someone conjuring a blade of fire. The dragon closed her eyes for a moment, muttering something under her breath in that strange language. Then she looked straight at the queen and dipped her head towards the bed.
‘May I?’
Beulah nodded, and Frecknock untucked the bedspread with surprising dexterity, revealing the queen’s injured leg. The dragon shook her head slightly, making a noise very much like the tutting of an unimpressed teacher.
‘Is there a problem?’ Beulah asked.
‘The leg should not have been bandaged so tightly, and certainly not without aligning the bones correctly first. This will heal, but if left like this you will always limp, and when the weather turns cold or damp your bones will ache at the memory of where they were broken.’
Beulah looked to Melyn for confirmation. The old man merely dipped his head once.
‘Do what you must then,’ Beulah said. ‘Just try not to make me scream. I can’t promise my guards won’t cut your head off.’
‘Frecknock is trying to help, you know.’ Melyn pulled his chair up close and settled himself down. The dragon extended a single talon and delicately cut the bandage away, whispering her strange incantations all the while. Beulah felt the release as the tight wrap fell away, but the dull throb turned to a stab of pain that made her breathe in sharply. Before she could say anything, Melyn had placed a hand on her shoulder. His touch was soothing, something flowing from him into her. She looked up at his face, seeing how fresh and young his skin looked, incongruous under that mop of white hair. His eyes were impossibly black, no iris around the pupil at all, and deep within them the flecks of red light sparkled like tiny jewels.
‘This will go easier if you sleep,’ he said, and Beulah realized how easily she had been fooled. Too late to fight, too late even to raise any mental shields, she was swept up in that gaze and away into blackness.
How long he walked for, Benfro could not have said. In his rush to escape, he just pushed on, hoping for the best. It wasn’t until he noticed that the torch he had taken from the wall no longer cast as much light as it had before that he stopped, worried it was going out. Then he realized that the flame no longer reflected off the tunnel walls. He wasn’t banging his head and the tips of his wing joints against the ceiling either. He stopped walking, listening for sounds of pursuit, but could hear nothing. Turning slowly, he looked back the way he had come and saw nothing. It was as dark as a cloudy, moonless night in the deep forest, no hint of the torches he had left behind and no scent of burning straw either. Reaching out, Benfro couldn’t feel the walls. He walked a few paces in what he thought was the right direction, noticing the surface of the floor through the soles of his feet for the first time. Had there been flagstones before? He thought there might have been, but now it was just rocky ground strewn with small sharp stones and grit. He bent down, holding the torch above his head with one hand as he felt with his other. The larger rocks were deep black and glistened in the light as if they were wet.
Benfro strained to hear anything in the total silence. The torch gave off the faintest of noises, a quiet shffff with an occasional pop. Apart from that and the sound of his own breathing there was nothing.
‘Hello?’ He listened for the echo of his voice, surprised when it described a much larger cavern than the narrow tunnel down which he had come.
‘Hello? Hello? Hello?’ Benfro felt a bit foolish repeating the word over and over, but as he said it and moved his head, so he began to form an idea of where the nearest wall was. Inching carefully and never quite trusting his full weight to just one leg, it took him long minutes to reach it, and when he did, it was made of the same black stone as the floor. He had thought it might reflect the flame from his torch, but instead it seemed to absorb all the light. He could only be sure it was there by touching it, and when he did it was surprisingly warm.
Close by, his questing fingers found an opening. The passage was narrow, but just about big enough for him to walk down without damage. His torch lit up a rough-hewn surface and a floor packed hard by the passage of many feet. Warm air blew into his face, bringing with it a melange of scents. Mostly it was an overpowering stench of ordure, but mixed in with it he could just about make out the individual odours of many people.
Benfro had always prided himself on his sense of smell, the ability to separate different ingredients from the mass. Some of his earliest memories were of helping his mother prepare medicines and unguents for the old dragons of the village. Identifying all the varied oils, minerals and herbs that went into each preparation by their smell had been a game, although now he could see it had been a part of his mother’s subtle training of him. And it had been worthwhile, for he could identify individual scents in the miasma, men all of them. Some had been here ages, others recently arrived. They all smelled unwell, underfed and exhausted. There was death here too, bodies rotting or dried to leathery skin and bone.
He found the first of them in a small cave just off the tunnel. Dark and musty, the fireplace at its centre was cold, embers as dead as the rag-bundled corpses that lay around it. Benfro’s missing eye could see nothing here, no Llinellau Grym, no glimpse of the aethereal. The bleakness of the place sucked at him, draining away any hope he might have had, any happiness. He backed out swiftly but not before he had caught an edge of a scent that sparked a memory.
Following it gave him purpose and helped to block the dread that tugged at his every step. Benfro sniffed his way down the tunnel until it opened out on to another large cavern, dark as pitch. Holding up his torch threw strange shapes around the floor nearby, and when he approached the nearest he saw that it was a cart, overturned to reveal metal wheels that would have run along tracks in the floor. Half crushed by it, a man lay on his back, eyes staring into the darkness. Benfro thought at first that his skin was black, but peering close he saw that it was simply covered in such a thick layer of filth the original colour could no longer be seen. He was dead of course, had been for some time.
The overturned cart lay beside a mound of night soil that rose into the darkness. Waving his torch around, Benfro could see no end to the stuff, and the overwhelming stench and the flat quality of the silent air suggested it was a mountain rather than a hill. Where he stood, the surface had dried and cracked, a few darker stains leaching out from underneath. The man had obviously been shovelling from the pile and taking it somewhere in his cart, but for the life of him Benfro couldn’t imagine why.
More men lay dead, splayed in a wide circle around the pile as if some giant had swiped at them with a massive hand. And then his missing eye picked up something else. Glittering like spider webs in dawn sunlight, thin strands of silver wrapped around the wrists of most of the dead men, shackling them to their carts with something akin to the Grym. Bending to the nearest and taking it in between finger and thumb, Benfro felt a jolt of restorative energy surge through him as the glow dissipated from the chain. Moving over to the next dead man, he felt the same lift and only then began to realize how exhausted and drained of hope he had been feeling.
One by one he stoope
d by each dead man, leaching the last remnants of strength from the silver chains until none were left. He was still weary, still worn down by the oppressive nature of the darkness that loomed all around, but he had escaped the dragons hunting him. Now all he needed to do was find a way out.
There was another tunnel, wider than the first and with its floor scored with parallel tracks along which the carts must have been pushed. Beyond it the air changed once more, the light from the torch swallowed by what felt like an even vaster darkness. There was a burned smell, like hot stones knocked together, the singe of hair and again that faintest trace of a familiar scent. It had been overpowered by the huge mound of ordure in the other cavern, but now Benfro recognized it.
‘Errol.’
He turned this way and that, seeking out the faintest trace that might give him a clue. The scent was old, but not so old that it had dissipated entirely. Errol had been here, had spent enough time to imprint some small part of himself on the walls and floor, lingering in the fetid air. Benfro didn’t want to know how he might have ended up here, he just had to be certain Errol had escaped.
Out in the passageway again, Benfro sniffed the air, then dropped down on to all fours and sniffed the ground. He might have felt faintly ridiculous, but the scent was clearer here. Still difficult to gauge the direction Errol had taken, he struck out the way he had originally come anyway.
As the smell of the dung heap lessened, so it was easier to follow Errol’s trail. Still Benfro was surprised when he came to the first fork in the path. He didn’t remember noticing one on his way in; indeed he had come further along the passage than should have been possible. Where was the first open space he had stumbled into after escaping the dungeon? Now he thought of it, he couldn’t detect any trace of the smoke from the straw fire, and the stench from the dung was just a faint reminder, clinging to his scales and feet rather than hanging in the air. There was the scent of Errol and a fresher taste to the air that spoke of cold running water and snow.